What is the primary purpose of the Worker Protocol?

It serves as a behavioral contract that governs how spawned AI agents operate, report their progress to GitHub, and handle task completion or failure.

Is the Worker Protocol invoked manually?

No, it is designed to be embedded into worker prompts by orchestration skills like worker-dispatch to govern the behavior of sub-agents.

How does this skill handle Claude's turn limits?

The protocol monitors turn usage and requires agents to trigger a formal handover process once they reach 85-90 turns to ensure work is continued by a fresh agent.

Does this skill work directly with GitHub?

Yes, it provides specific templates for posting startup, progress, and exit comments directly onto GitHub issues to keep human developers informed.

What happens if a worker agent gets blocked?

The protocol defines a specific 'Worker Blocked' exit condition that requires the agent to document what was tried and what specific external action is needed to proceed.

Worker Protocol

Name: Worker Protocol
Author: troykelly

bytroykelly

0•

Productivity & Workflow

Defines a standardized behavioral contract for autonomous worker agents to ensure consistent reporting, startup validation, and graceful task handovers.

The Worker Protocol skill establishes a robust operational framework for spawned AI worker agents within the Claude Code environment. By injecting specific behavioral rules into worker prompts, it ensures every agent follows a mandatory startup checklist, provides structured progress updates via GitHub comments, and adheres to strict exit conditions. This protocol is essential for multi-agent orchestration, maintaining transparency through automated status reports, and managing turn budgets to prevent work loss. It bridges the gap between autonomous execution and human oversight by enforcing consistent templates for PRs, blockers, and handovers.

Key Features

01Automated turn budget monitoring with proactive handover triggers at 90+ turns

02Mandatory startup checklists for context verification and branch safety

03Standardized templates for successful PRs, external blockers, and research cycles

040 GitHub stars

05Enforced behavioral rules for scoped work and project-specific standards like TDD

06Structured GitHub issue commenting for real-time progress visibility

Use Cases

01Managing long-running coding tasks that require multiple agent sessions or handovers

02Automating status reporting for autonomous development work in shared repositories

03Ensuring AI agents follow strict commit message and PR formats without manual intervention

What are Skills?·How to Install

Install with 🐟 Skill.Fish

npx skillfish add troykelly/claude-skills worker-protocol

For use in Claude.ai and ChatGPT

Download Skill